Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Harvesting Cash: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

WSJ--We can't wait to hear how Members of Congress explain their vote this week for the new $300 billion farm bill. At a time when Americans are squeezed at the grocery store, they will now see more of their taxes flow to the very farmers profiting from these high food prices.

This year farm income is expected to reach an all-time high of $92.3 billion, an increase of 56% in two years (see chart above), making growers perhaps the most undeserving welfare recipients in American history. But that won't stop this bill from passing the House and Senate by wide margins.

If you wonder why urban Democrats would vote for this rural giveaway, the answer is they have been bought off with roughly $10 billion in extra funding for food stamps and nutrition welfare programs. Someone should tell them that their constituents might not need this cash if the farm bill didn't help keep food prices high.

3 Comments:

I was raised in a farming family & have logged my time on the farm so I feel compelled to make a point here. I'm in a quasi-agreement about how farm subsidies do not work a vast majority of the time. It has been my experience that the wealthier farmers are the ones that recieve a bulk of these subsidies and the struggling farmers are left out for the most part.

But what I really wanted to point out, is although grain prices are off the charts & the consumer is feeling the squeeze, input costs have increased substantially too. Equipment & maintainence costs have skyrocketed, not to mention farm diesel is over $3.00/gallon which is insanely expensive (a combine can easily use 200 gallons in one day's use & when harvest lasts a few weeks, well you get my point). Certainly farmers aren't complaining about the price of grains but their margins aren't changing like this article infers.

> WSJ--We can't wait to hear how Members of Congress explain their vote this week for the new $300 billion farm bill. At a time when Americans are squeezed at the grocery store, they will now see more of their taxes flow to the very farmers profiting from these high food prices

Can anyone else say "WINDFALL PROFITS" !?!?!

> Certainly farmers aren't complaining about the price of grains but their margins aren't changing like this article infers.